


But You Know I'm a Liar

by gutsforgarters



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Age Difference, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Older Man/Younger Woman, Possessive Behavior, Post-Season/Series 03, Semi-Public Sex, Smut, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-25 22:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19755106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters
Summary: Kate opens a vein for Richie in the aftermath of a heist gone sour, and Seth isn't jealous.That's his story and he's sticking to it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the short, smutty thing I mentioned in the end notes of _Sour Cherry_. 
> 
> It. Is not short.
> 
> I just wanna emphasize that there's no Kate/Richie in this. Like, none. Just Seth being an insecure dork. 
> 
> Title from "Fire" by the Pointer Sisters.

“‘We need to get the fuck out of Texas,’ I said. ‘This whole fuckin’ state’s been nothing but bad juju from the start,’ I said. Did anybody listen to me? No, they fuckin’ did _not_!”

“We heard you the first ten times,” says Richie, but the sarcasm rampant in his voice loses a great deal of its bite when he coughs wetly and sputters a river of blood all down his front.

Right, that. Richie is quite possibly hacking up _literal_ pieces of his lungs in the backseat of their GTO because the stupid bastard got his dumb ass _shot up_ by the fucking pigs, and there’s not a damn thing Seth can do about it except outrace the cops and find a place to lay low. At least Richie’s culebra constitution is good for something; if he were still human, he’d almost certainly be dead by now.

Seth yanks the steering wheel to the left and swings around an SUV whose driver clearly doesn’t have the sense God gave a rock. Did they not see the blue and red lights flashing in their rearview mirror? Even if they somehow missed _that_ , surely there’s no mistaking the sound of a _goddamn_ police siren.

Speaking of rearview mirrors, Seth risks taking his eyes off the road long enough to look in his. There’re the blue and white lights, cutting ribbons through the dark backdrop of late evening, and then there’s Richie, slumped in his seat, hands pressed to his abdomen to staunch the flow of blood. Another, smaller set of hands joins his a second later, fingers gripping bundles of torn-up fabric.

“Goddammit, Kate,” Seth complains. “That dress wasn’t cheap, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” says Kate, sarcasm unfiltered because _she_ , thank fucking God, made it out of that bank unscathed. “Obviously my wardrobe should take priority over the _bullet holes_ in Richie’s _stomach_!”

“ _Pfft_.” Seth swerves around a truck with actual fucking deer antlers mounted on its roof, and the driver leans on the horn, half deafening him. Dumb hick. “Richie’ll heal. I’m pretty sure bloodstains aren’t covered under the returns policy.”

“So buy her a new dress.” Richie punctuates his sage advice with another awful wet cough, and Seth knows he’s gonna be alright, but that does nothing to soothe the instinctive bolt of fear that rips through him at hearing his brother in such a shitty state. “Not like we don’t have the cash to spare.”

Yeah. At least they got away with the money. At least there’s that.

Well. They _might_ get away with the money, supposing that the pigs don’t catch up to them.

“He’s not gonna heal,” Kate argues. “Not unless he—”

Kate’s words cut off, drowned out by her own shriek and the sound of cracking glass. In the mirror, Seth sees Richie wrap an arm around Kate’s shoulders and yank her down, out of the line of fire. He also sees the bullet lodged in the rear windshield.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Seth barks. “Kate, you okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Kate says weakly, just as Richie says, “Is _she_ okay? What about _me_?”

Seth ignores him. “Motherfucking—Kate, can you take out their tires from here?”

“I dunno,” Kate says as she cautiously sits back up. Well, at least she’s being honest about her abilities. Kate isn’t a crappy shot by any means, but she hasn’t really had occasion to hit a moving target, and shooting out tires from a hundred feet away isn’t the same as popping beer bottles from a few yards back.

“ _I_ could make the shot,” says Richie. “If I wasn’t hacking up my fucking _lungs_.”

There’s a beat of silence—well, relative silence, given that the discordant background music of police sirens and blaring horns has yet to die down—and then Kate says, so quietly that Seth almost misses it, “Richie. Feed on me.”

Seth nearly crashes the GTO into the fucking concrete traffic barrier. “That is _not_ happening.”

“Yeah, it is,” says Kate, and a glance in the rearview mirror shows that she’s already rolling up her sleeve.

“Just—just hold on a fucking second. Let me—”

“Pull the car over, get out, and switch places with me?” Kate retorts. “Yeah. That sounds doable.”

For a second—less than—laughter froths in Seth’s voice. “Kid, I’m starting to think I’ve been a bad influence on you.”

“Hey.” Richie’s voice is a hell of a lot weaker than it was even a minute ago, and, again, it triggers an instinctive jolt of fear. He’s fine, it’s fine, they’re gonna be _fine_. “Kate’s old enough to make her own decisions. Not like she needs a permission slip for _this_ blood drive.”

It’s the most sensible option, is the thing, and Seth knows it. Kate’s not a good enough shot to take out those tires from here, but Richie is, and Richie can’t take the shot if he can’t hardly move. It’s just that the idea of Kate spilling more blood for the Gecko brothers does not sit well with him. Not at fucking all.

“I’m not gonna wait around for you to be okay with this,” Kate informs Seth. “Richie took those shots for _me_. If he hadn’t, I’d be dead, and you _know it_.”

Seth takes her words like a punch, the numb horror from when Kate died _for real_ threatening to make an untimely comeback. “Not playing fair, kiddo.”

“Who said anything about _fair_? Richie, here.”

Seth’s not looking in the mirror this time, but he still hears the breathless little exclamation Kate makes when Richie sinks his fangs into the soft flesh of her arm.

“Goddammit, Richard—”

“It’s fine,” Kate says, voice thin and high with what Seth damn well knows is restrained pain. “It’s just like getting a booster shot.”

As someone who’s been bitten by two different culebras on two different occasions, Seth can categorically say that that’s bullshit. But what’s he gonna do? Takes his hands off the wheel, reach into the backseat, and yank the two of them apart? That idea has its attractions, but Seth knows it’s not on the table. Not if he wants to keep the three of them out of jail.

And no way in flaming _hell_ is he letting Kate go to jail.

After an interminable length of time that at once feels like over an hour and less than a minute, Richie pulls off of Kate’s arm with an obscene pop.

“Feeling better?” Kate asks, and goddammit, she sounds faint.

“Fuck, Richard, how much did you take?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Mom. She’s fine.”

Seth doesn’t believe that, but when he catches Kate’s eye in the rearview mirror, she smiles at him and gives him a thumbs up. Then she tears more strips off her dress, winding a makeshift tourniquet around her upper arm and staunching her sluggishly bleeding wound.

As for Richie, he’s flushed with healthy color, and if it weren’t for the bloodstains on his mouth and shirt, you’d never know he was shot at all.

“Just like Ovaltine,” Seth mumbles.

Richie checks his gun’s clip before cocking the hammer and rolling down the left rear window. “Kate, duck,” he says, hardly giving her time to do exactly that before sticking his upper body out the window and squeezing off four rounds of gunfire.

In the rearview mirror, Seth sees the cop cars’ tires blow out. They go spinning like tops, crashing into one another with a nasty crunch of glass and metal.

Seth smacks his hands against the steering wheel and lets out a whoop. “That’s my boy!”

Richie ducks back into the car. “Thanks, Kate.”

“No problem,” she says. Seth can’t see her wounds anymore, but he can picture them vividly: two neat, dark holes, dripping bright, fresh blood. His smile fades.

He shakes his head and concentrates on getting as far from Austin as humanly possible.

* * *

They ditch the battered GTO, trading it out for a stolen sedan that smells like reheated chicken fingers and cruising down the highway until they come across an out-of-the-way-ish Super 8. Kate’s the one who books the room, because her face is the least infamous.

They’re staying in room number 69, which is possibly the funniest thing to happen to Seth all week. He and Richie exchange a look over Kate’s head while she fumbles with the keycard: Richie smirks thinly, and Seth musters up a tired, “Nice.”

Kate frowns at them, frowns at the door, does a double take, and rolls her eyes. “Oh, that’s mature,” she says, slotting the key into the lock and pushing on the door handle. She leads the way into the room, flicking on the lights as she goes.

“Hey, you got the joke,” says Seth. He hooks the Do Not Disturb tag onto the knob before pulling the door shut and throwing the flimsy lock. “That makes you just as immature as us, princess.”

Kate rolls her eyes again and flops onto the bed farthest from the door. Seth didn’t want them in separate rooms, not with the law practically breathing down their necks, so two of them are gonna have to double up—and those two are gonna be Seth and Kate, obviously, because Richie turns into an octopus in his sleep and no one wants to deal with that.

“I went to _high school_ , Seth,” Kate says, wiggling out of the jacket she wore into the motel office so the clerk wouldn’t see her wounded arm. “That’s the only joke teenage boys _know_.”

“That and the Pen Island thing,” says Richie. He sits down on the foot of the other bed, sets aside the bag with their money in it, and unbuttons his formerly white shirt to inspect the damage.

“The what now?” Seth asks, only to hold up a staying hand when Richie opens his mouth to respond. “Never mind. I don’t wanna know.” He points at Kate, snaps his fingers, then points at the bathroom. “C’mon, kiddo. Get on in there.”

“I don’t need you fussing over me, Seth,” Kate says, but she climbs off the bed and does as she’s told, for once. And is Seth being paranoid, or did she just stumble for a second there?

Goddammit, he _knew_ Richie took too much.

Seth follows Kate to the bathroom, glaring at Richie in passing. Richie just stares blankly back, because of course the little fucker doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

The bathroom’s set up the way a lot of motel bathrooms are: little curtained alcove with a sink and mirror, and then a toilet and combo bath/shower beyond a separate door. Kate’s waiting for Seth in the alcove, back propped against the counter, arms folded across her stomach like _she_ was the one who got her torso pumped full of lead, like she’s trying to hold something in. Seth yanks the curtain shut and sets a plastic shopping bag and first aid kit down on the green-speckled counter; he risked a stop at a convenience store for this shit, and it thankfully went a helluva lot better than the Benny’s World of Liquor Incident, probably because Seth made Richie wait in the car.

“You gonna tell me why you’re pissed?” Kate asks him quietly as he pulls her left arm away from her stomach and gets to unwinding the strips of soiled cloth.

“Do I need to?” Seth retorts, feeling only a little bad when Kate hisses at the sting of blood-stiffened fabric peeling away from her skin. Serves her right, anyway.

“He saved my life, Seth,” Kate says, still speaking quietly, as if Richie’s stupid culebra hearing can’t pick up on every breath they pull into their lungs.

“Yeah, he did.” Seth runs a white motel towel under the sink and starts to (gently) sponge the blood from Kate’s skin, turning her arm with a hand on her wrist to get it all. “Didn’t give him the right to tear into you like this, Jesus.”

Seth’s not looking at Kate’s face, but he doesn’t need to. The eye roll comes across loud and clear in her voice when she says, “He didn’t _tear into me_ , Seth. Look, it’s fine.”

The thing is, aside from the part where it isn’t fine at all, the wounds really don’t look all that bad. Two neat little wounds like someone took a hole punch to her arm, no tears. Even in the spectacularly shitty state that Richie was in, he was careful with Kate.

Which is just as well, because if he _hadn’t_ been, Seth would’ve yanked his goddamn fangs out and crammed them down his throat. 

But Seth’s not in an especially forgiving mood, so he just makes a grouchy noise and flips the first aid kit’s lid, swiping disinfectant over the wounds and then taping them up. He’s got Kate crowded against the counter and is pretty much pinning her in place, but she doesn’t complain. Just stands there and breathes quietly against Seth’s throat, the soft rise of her stomach brushing his every time she exhales. And now is probably not the time to be noticing them, but Seth’s eyes trail across Kate’s breasts as he works, mind wandering even as his hands stay steady. Her ruined dress has a high empire waist, and the scoop-necked bodice grabs her tits and hefts them up like they’re being palmed by a pair of hands. It's cold enough in the air-conditioned room that the shadows of her hard nipples stand out like fat, ripe cherries through the gauzy pink fabric.

And then Seth has to think about a naked Uncle Eddie (may he rest in peace) to stop himself from getting a boner right up against Kate’s beautifully curvy hip. _God’s sake, Gecko, don’t be such a fucking creep._

Kate says, “You worry about me. I get that, and I appreciate it.”

What the fuck? “I look like some kinda mother goddamn hen to you, princess?”

Kate tilts her head and squints at Seth from under her lashes. Her mascara’s coming off. “Yeah, you kinda do.”

She’s damn lucky she’s injured, or else Seth would’ve picked her up, carried her downstairs, and dumped her in the goddamn pool. Mother hen his fine _ass_.

Seth finishes taping up Kate’s wounds and jerks his chin at the plastic bag listing sideways on the counter. “Just get some sugar in your system, alright?” Orange juice and chocolate chip cookies, just like a blood drive. “I ain’t carrying your ass to bed if you faint.” 

Kate’s mouth curls into a smirk, and Seth can practically _see_ the words _mother hen_ dancing in her eyes, but then the curtain Seth yanked shut rustles open, plastic hoops squealing across the metal rod. Seth steps away from Kate and turns to find Richie slumped in the archway, eyes sharp behind those stupid nerd glasses he doesn’t need anymore.

“Hey, Florence Nightingale. Why aren’t you fussing over _me_? _I’m_ the one who got _shot_.”

Seth clips the first aid kit shut. “ _You_ can get gangrene for all I care.”

“Culebras don’t get gangrene. I think.”

“Then you should be fine and fuckin’ dandy.”

“I’m still coughing up bullets,” says Richie, and then, as if to illustrate this, he works his mouth like he’s chewing on something nasty and spits one of said bullets onto the bristly carpet.

“Gross,” says Kate.

Seth’s already stepping in front of Kate. Her breath tickles the nape of his neck, making the fine hairs there stand up. “You’re not feeding on her again, dickhead. You take any more blood, she’s gonna pass the fuck out.”

“But I need—”

Jesus Christ, _fine_. Seth shucks his jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeve. Wincing, he holds out his arm.

Richie stares at that arm like it’s got a live bomb strapped to it or something, and Seth snaps, “What the hell’re you waiting for? It’s feeding time at the zoo, asshole.”

Richie squints at him. “You never let me feed on you.”

“You gonna look a gift vein in the mouth? Just get it over with before I change my mind.”

Kate sidles out from behind Seth, frowning at him in passing. She heads into the bedroom, shaking her head all the while.

In the end, Richie does feed from Seth. And, nope. Seth’s memory didn’t fail him, because it definitely doesn’t feel like a booster shot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody get this man a glass of water.

“You guys’re all over the news,” Scott informs them, voice coming out boxed and tinny because of the speaker phone.

“Yeah, we know,” says Kate. Seth can’t see her face, given that she’s sitting perched on his back while he does pushups, but she’s probably looking at the TV screen. “All of the eyewitnesses are saying that I don’t _look_ like a bank robber.”

“Dumbasses,” Scott pronounces, and Seth’s inclined to agree with that assessment. Judging Kate by her cornfed, apple pie appearance is a little bit like assuming that a stray cat won’t bite just because it’s cute and fuzzy. “Some guy on the channel I’m watching just compared Seth and Richie to the Blues Brothers.”

“I’ll take it,” says Richie, and Kate giggles as she readjusts her weight. Her ass is nestled in the dip of Seth’s spine, plush and warm, and Seth wouldn’t’ve asked her to help him with his morning workout routine if he’d known that her _help_ would be this damn distracting. But that’s his own stupid fault, isn’t it, considering that Kate Fuller is the very _definition_ of _distracting_.

“Hey,” says Scott, voice getting louder all of a sudden so the line crackles with a burst of static. “What’s all that grunting for? Is somebody jerking off over there?”

“If only,” Richie deadpans. The last Seth looked at him, he was sitting on his bed with his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, fingers shifting restlessly on the remote control.

“Don’t be gross, Richie.” Kate shifts again, ass sliding further up Seth’s back, and he hopes to God that everyone who can hear it will attribute his bitten-off groan to the strain in his muscles as he pushes away from the floor. “Nobody’s _jerking off_ , Scott, jeez. Seth’s just doing pushups.”

“Yeah, well,” Scott says after a beat, sounding placated in a grudging sort of way. “Just make sure that he doesn’t go doing any _pushups_ on top of _you_ , alright?”

Seth’s arms nearly collapse out from under him. “What the _fuck_ , Scott?” he barks, even as Kate hisses, “ _Scott_! What is your _problem_?”

“My _problem_ is that my _sister’s_ been left unsupervised with a couple of—”

“Don’t you start. I’m old enough to make my own decisions, and I don’t need a chaperone. And I’ve _told_ you that you could’ve come along if you’d wanted.”

“So I can get shot at by the cops? No fucking thanks.” At least the kid’s let up on the uncomfortable shit. “Hey, speaking of. Did Richie really get shot?”

“Yup,” says Richie. “You should’ve seen my stomach. It was like somebody ran a cheese grater over it.” Richie, consummate freak that he is, sounds weirdly _cheerful_ about this.

“Yeah?” And just like that, the suspicious edge is back. “You don’t _sound_ like you’re coughing up blood. Who’d you feed on?”

“Me,” Seth says immediately, because it’s technically true. “Hurt like a son of a bitch, too.”

“You’re just lucky he didn’t rip out your throat,” says Scott, sounding vaguely disappointed that Richie didn’t do exactly that. “It’s hard enough to feed without killing the person when you’re _not_ injured, and it’s pretty much impossible to hold back when you _are_.”

Yeah, well. It just fucking figures that Richie’s more well-adjusted as a culebra than he ever was as a human.

“Well, we got the money, and everybody’s fine.” Kate rests one hand on the nape of Seth’s neck as she talks, scratching absently at his hair like she’s not even thinking about what she’s doing, and a straining sort of heat that has nothing to do with physical exertion starts to expand in Seth’s stomach. “I call that a win.”

“Have I told you lately that you make terrible life choices?” Scott asks.

“Love you too,” Kate says pointedly.

“Yeah, alright. Text me if you get arrested.”

“Good _bye_ , Scott.”

“Yeah, bye.”

Kate hangs up, and Seth collapses onto his forearms—on purpose, this time. Kate stops scratching his neck—he’s at once relieved and disappointed by this—and taps his shoulder.

“All done?”

“Yeah,” Seth grunts, and Kate climbs off of him. Seth rolls onto his back, then sits up. He lifts the hem of his undershirt and uses it to wipe sweat off his temples, and when he drops it again, he catches Kate in the act of looking quickly away from him.

Seth’s lips quirk. Too bad Richie’s here, or else Seth would’ve teased the hell out of her for that.

Might’ve done a lot more than _tease_ her, actually, if she wanted him to. Although teasing would almost certainly be involved regardless, because Seth’s an asshole who likes to watch people squirm.

Kate crosses her arms. She’s still in the t-shirt and shorts she wore to bed, and she’s not wearing a bra, so the gesture does interesting things to her tits, pulls the cotton taut around her curves.

“I’m gonna go for a swim,” she announces, unfolding her arms and crossing the room to dig through her purple suitcase—Seth hauled the rest of their shit inside after Richie finished gnawing on his arm last night—before heading to the bathroom and shutting the door behind her.

Seth can _feel_ Richie’s eyes digging into the side of his face like the asshole’s trying to burrow into his fucking brain. “ _Don’t_ say it.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Richie changes the channel, swapping out the news—which had moved on to the weather forecast, anyway—for Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. “I’m just watching cartoons and minding my business.”

Seth opens his mouth to tell Richie where he can stick that remote control, but then Kate comes out of the bathroom in her bikini (not yellow or polka dotted but definitely itsy bitsy and teeny weeny), one motel towel tied around her waist like a skirt and another bundled in her arms. Looking at her dressed like that, Seth can’t help but think of the second time he ever saw her, stumbling into her family’s room at the Dew Drop Inn like she’d been struck over the head with a frying pan, eyes wide with the shock of _I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening-to-me._

Seth squints at her. “You got your gun and phone on you?”

Kate folds back the towel in her arms, revealing a bottle of Coppertone, her cell, and the Smith & Wesson that Seth handpicked for her himself. “Satisfied?” she asks him.

Not even remotely. “Alright, alright. Go forth and stew in chlorine. If you see anyone who even looks like they might be _related_ to a cop, you text me and get the fuck out of there. And don’t get your bandages wet.”

Kate rolls her eyes. She does that a lot around him. “Yes, _Dad_ ,” she says tartly, and it’s just as well that she’s already on her way out the door, because Seth does _not_ need her seeing the way he winced when she called him that.

He can _not_ deal with that particular mindfuck on top of _everything else_.

The door clips shut behind Kate, and Richie, being the horrible, _horrible_ person that he is, wastes no time in saying, “Y’know, I hear some guys are into that. Being called—”

Seth bounces to his feet, worked-out muscles burning a little with the movement, and points a warning finger at Richie. “One more word out of you and I’m shoving a stake where the sun don’t shine.”

Richie pushes his glasses up his nose. “The sun doesn’t really shine on most parts of me in general. Y’know. Because culebra.”

Oh, to be an only child. Seth turns away to dig through his bag for a change of clothes. “Christ, I need a shower. I’m all grungy and shit.”

Without missing a beat, Richie asks, “Gonna clean the pipes?”

Seth considers shooting Richie, in the head, just once. It won’t do him any permanent damage, and it’ll shut him up for at least a few minutes. But if the neighbors hear gunshots, the cops will descend on this place like gnats on roadkill, so Seth restrains himself. _Valiantly_.

Seth drags the bathroom door shut behind him, flicking on the lights and slumping against the cracked wall for a second, trying to get his blood pressure under control. Except then his eyes happen to land on the shut toilet lid, piled onto which are Kate’s t-shirt and shorts and—oh, Christ— _panties_ , and any hope he had of lowering his blood pressure flies right out the proverbial fucking window.

Jaw strung tight, Seth looks determinedly away from _that_ — _pink_ , her little cotton granny panties are the same sweet peachy pink that he imagines her nipples to be—and strips out of his clothes, stepping into the shower without checking the temperature first because he’s not a fucking pussy.

It’s cold as shit, cold as a downpour in the middle of winter, and for a second, Seth considers leaving it like that and calming down that way, but, listen. He’d be lying if he said he’s never jerked off to Kate Fuller before, alright? The mind tends to wander when you’ve got your hand on your dick, and for a long time, when they were on the run in Mexico, Kate was the only constant in his life. It only stood to reason that he’d wind up thinking about her in _that_ way, because she’s pretty, and because they got along surprisingly well when they weren’t jumping down each other’s throats, and because he’s a fucking bastard who’s not going to let something like a measly twelve-year age difference stop him.

Only, he _did_ let it stop him as far as _doing anything_ about it was concerned. He never touched _her_. Just himself.

Seth realizes that he’s touching himself right now, hand curved almost absently around the base of his dick, the side of his palm brushing his balls. He’s halfway to hard and he’s _been_ that way since Kate climbed onto his back and inadvertently rubbed her perfect ass all over him.

But if Seth jerks off right now, Richie will definitely hear him—not that it’d be the first time, considering that they’ve been living in each other’s pockets since forever. And maybe Seth should just turn the shower spray back to cold and let the arctic water calm him the fuck down, but he’d probably be better off just getting it out of his system. He’s not eighteen anymore, so if he comes now, chances are good that he won’t get horny again for at least another half hour.

Possibly less than, considering that Kate is, like, the embodiment of sex without even _meaning_ to be.

Seth turns his back to the warming spray and tightens his hold on his stiff dick, grip just this close to painful, so he can feel his own touch in the backs of his teeth. He bets that Kate would be tight enough to almost hurt him, too. As far as he’s aware, she’s still a virgin. She’d probably be tight enough to choke an orgasm out of him on the first push, to grab him in a wet stranglehold and not let go.

He wouldn’t _want_ her to let him go.

Seth groans, not caring for the moment that his brother can hear him. He braces his free hand on the slick, tiled wall. Thinks of other things that’d get slick if only he was allowed to touch them.

He thinks of what would’ve happened if he’d followed her to the pool. He doesn’t own swim trunks because he's never cared for bathing in chlorine and other people’s sweat—never fucking mind the kids and occasional disgusting adults who’ll just release their bladders into public pools like they think the world is their toilet—but in this constructed scenario, he’s got a pair. He’s in swim trunks, and Kate’s in the little green bikini that brings out her eyes, and they’re sitting in the cheap plastic chaise lounges ubiquitous to motels everywhere. No, they’re _sharing_ a chaise lounge, and Kate’s straddling his lap, plush thighs damp with pool water. Yeah, this is getting good.

No one else is around, obviously, because even though Seth gets off on the thrill of _potentially_ getting caught, _actually_ being watched is not something he’s into. He’s _definitely_ not into the prospect of anyone but _him_ getting to see Kate naked, especially in this context. So, they’re alone, and no one else’s gonna show up, but in his head, Seth teases Kate about getting caught anyway. Asks her how she’d feel if someone were to walk on by and see her sitting in Seth’s lap, white sunblock smeared messily in the dip of her back like come, getting her tits sucked through her bikini top.

Because that’s what Seth’s doing. He’s sucking on her tits, sucking on those ripe little nipples, getting them to turn from peachy pink to cherry red, getting them all flared up and aching. He drags her bikini straps down her shoulders so her cute little tits pop out, rolls his tongue across her bumpy areolas, feels the rasp of sparse wiry hair, works her nipples back into hard little knobs every time it feels like they’re gonna get soft again. Feels her fingers weave through his hair, right at the crown of his skull, pulling at the roots till his eyes burn, and he loves it, he fucking loves it.

As much as he loves her tits and loves getting his hair pulled, he’d love to be sucking on something else of hers even more, so he pushes the chaise lounge flat—without any swearing or difficulty, because this is fantasy and not concrete reality and everything just goes dreamy smooth—and lies back, coaxing Kate off his lap—missing the pressure of her hips, the burn of her pussy through her bikini bottoms and his shorts, but knowing that the tradeoff will be worth it—and up his chest. And she’s shy about it, because of course she is, because she’s the preacher’s daughter who thought that French kissing her virginal Jesus freak of a boyfriend in the back of a church was some great sin worth confessing to, but she wants it just as bad as Seth does right now, so she slips off her bikini bottoms, slides them down those sweet soft legs, and straddles Seth’s face.

For a second, Seth’s fantasy hits a speed bump, and his hand stutters on his dick, because he’s still not sure if that hell bitch changed Kate’s hair from brown to red with some kind of woo-woo shit or just plain dyed it like a human would. Are her pubes brown or red? For simplicity’s sake, Seth decides that she’s shaved, even though he knows she’s not, even though he’s seen the shadow of wiry hair through her panties before. But it’s easier to picture her that way than to waffle over her pubic hair, so that’s what Seth does.

So she’s bare, okay, smooth and soft like her long legs and plush thighs; and her pussy’s pink, right, a darker pink than her nipples, inner lips curling out of her cunt like membranous wings. She’s already dripping like a fucking faucet because she’s sweet and sensitive and no one’s ever done this to her before, never even tried. And as Seth looks at her, so close to his face, cutting off his fresh air with her humid, musky smell—who needs fresh air when you’ve got a face full of Kate Fuller, anyway—practically fucking smothering him with the heat that comes off of her like an oven, a thick bead of slick rolls down her cunt and drips into his open mouth, and he can’t wait anymore. He cranes his neck and grabs two handful of her ass, dragging her down flush with his mouth and parting her pink lips with his tongue. 

Anybody who knows anything about getting their mouth on a pussy knows that you can’t half ass it, and you’ve really got go for it like you’re actually, literally eating something if you wanna get the other person off, so that’s what Seth does. He opens his jaw wide like a snake’s and fucking _eats_ her steamy little pussy, rasps his stubble across all that sensitive tissue, smearing her slick all over his mouth like cooking grease, impales her on his stiffened tongue before dragging it back out of her and wrapping his lips around her pounding little clit.

And Kate’s fucking riding his face, breathing punched-out little sounds that are trying to be his name, and there’s probably no way in hell she’d ever want to do this, but Seth’s delirious brain latches onto their room number, and suddenly Kate’s facing the other way, still sitting on his face but leaning _her_ face over his lap, and she’s got her hot little mouth on his dick, eager and sloppy like she’s starving for it, wet suction like a pussy clenching through an orgasm, and she’s never sucked a cock before but it’s perfect anyway because it’s _Kate_.

And she’s into it, she’s so into it, her pussy’s fucking spasming against his jaw even as she moans on his dick and takes him down her throat, her throat that’s as tight as her pussy’s going to be, and Seth wants to fuck her. He wants to fuck her so bad, wants to ram his dick so far up her cunt she’ll feel him in her _stomach_ , wants to watch his white come drip out of her red pussy like cream from a cake, and he’s fucking gagging for it, and Kate wants it too. She wants it because she’s his girl. He stole her and he let her go but she _came back_ to him, she _chose_ him, and that makes her _his_.

Seth squeezes his pulsing dick, and he’s coming, he’s shuddering through it, he’s collapsing with one shoulder braced against the shower wall and feeling his orgasm in every inch of his body, feeling it in his fucking _toes_ , and holy shit. Holy goddamn shit, where the fuck did _that_ come from?

Panting like a dog, Seth peels his eyes open and turns slowly around on legs that feel like wet noodles, watching his white spunk sludge across the whiter tub and wash down the drain. He swears that he can fucking _taste_ her, musky come and sharp chlorine. Jesus Christ. Just, _Jesus Christ_.

There’s no way in hell that Richie didn’t hear him. Fuck, Seth’d be surprised if the _whole western hemisphere_ didn’t hear him. And he’ll have to deal with that eventually. But for now, he’s gonna wash the come off his twitching stomach and enjoy his afterglow while it lasts, thanks.

And he’s _definitely_ not going to think about how he won’t be able to look Kate in the eye for the rest of the day, either. 

* * *

It’s been long enough since the bank robbery, and they’re far enough away from Austin, that Seth’s feels it’s safe to take Kate dress shopping. But if she winds up tearing _this one_ to shreds, Seth’s gonna have some Things to say to her.

And it’s like Kate can _feel_ Seth thinking in her direction, because the mint-green changing room curtains twitch, and out she comes in this white dress that Seth might describe as _plain_ if anybody else were wearing it, but on her, it works. Kate looks good in simple stuff.

Kate does a little half twirl, not turning in a complete circle but just kind of swaying back and forth so the dress’s skirt flares out around her knees and shapes itself to her hips. Seth is abruptly struck with a critical case of dry mouth.

Holding her arms out from her sides, palms up, Kate goes, “Well?”

Seth’s going to play it cool and make a fairly neutral comment, something like, “It’s a nice dress, kiddo,” except Richie beats him to it.

Glancing up from his phone, Richie gives Kate a onceover and says, “You look like a virgin sacrifice.”

Kate’s face goes kind of flat, and then _Richie’s_ face cycles through the stages of “Oh, shit” because Kate really almost _was_ a virgin sacrifice, okay, not once but fucking _twice_ , and Seth’s turning in his too-plush department store chair to fucking clock Richie in the mouth when Kate speaks up.

With a deliberate kind of casualness, Kate pinches her dress’s skirt and holds it out like she’s gonna do a curtsy. “So you don’t like it?”

Who the fuck cares whether _Richie_ likes it? All that matters is that _Kate_ likes it, because she’s the one who’ll be fucking wearing it.

“No, it looks really pretty on you,” Richie rushes to say. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It was just a joke.” Seth scowls at him, and Richie adds, “A bad joke.”

“It’s fine.” Kate seems to mean it, and she’s smiling a little, because if she’s one thing, it’s way too forgiving of Geckos. She turns that smile on Seth, and it gets a little brighter, a little more sincere. “What d’you think, Seth?”

Seth blinks. Yeah, did he say he was going to keep it cool and make a safe, neutral comment? He feels like that won’t cut it anymore, like he’s gotta compensate for Richie’s fumble and make Kate _happy_ again, because that’s all he really wants in this moment. For her to be happy.

Jesus, he’s such a fucking pussy.

“You look, uh.” Seth tries to work enough spit into his mouth to talk. “You look real good, princess. I mean, _really_ good.”

Kate’s smile gets bigger. Seth can’t look away from it, or her.

In Seth’s periphery, he glimpses a pale blur of motion as Richie looks back and forth between him and Kate. “Okay,” says Richie. “I think I’m gonna go feed on that cute sales associate now. Shopping really stirs up my appetite.” 

“Have fun with that,” Seth says blankly, not even glancing in his brother’s direction. Kate sinks her teeth into her lower lip like she’s trying to trap her smile and keep it from crawling right off her face.

Richie gets up and goes, muttering something under his breath, and Kate asks, “What did Richie just say?”

“I wasn’t listening,” Seth admits.

Kate wanders over to Seth and stands in front of him, legs bumping his knees. She takes his left hand and holds it between both of hers, tracing her nails lightly over his palm and making him twitch. The white dress is sleeveless, and Seth can make out the scars left behind by Richie’s fangs, pink and fading. His face twists into a scowl.

Kate must have guessed what he’s thinking, because she says, “I’ll do it again if I have to, you know. If there’s an emergency.”

That is _so_ not what Seth wanted to hear. “So, what? He says, ‘Feed me, Seymour,’ and you open a vein? Is that how we’re doing things now?”

Seth wants to slide his hand up Kate’s arm and cover the marks of Richie’s fangs with his palm. He doesn’t.

Kate squeezes his hand, her grip this side of painful the way Seth’s own hand on his dick was this side of painful, and that is not a thought to be having in the middle of a high-end department store with Kate standing right in front of him in the perfect position to look down and see his hard-on pushing against his slacks.

“He’s my friend,” says Kate. “He’s my _family_ , and I take care of my family.”

On the one hand, hearing that makes Seth happy, alright? It does. Because Kate’s the first girl he’s had feelings for who likes Richie, too, who hasn’t tried to break the two of them up, and God knows that’s a relief because the Gecko brothers are too fucking codependent to ever let a woman get between them for long. But Kate fits with them, has slotted herself neatly into place as their third partner like they were just waiting their whole lives for her to show up. She _belongs_ with them.

On the other hand, Seth really, _really_ cannot stand the thought of Kate getting hurt because of him or Richie ever again. Like, just thinking about it makes him want to crawl out of his own skin.

Kate grazes the backs of her fingers across Seth’s palm, and he looks at her grudgingly, afraid that she’ll flinch away from whatever she sees on his face, but she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.

With this weird little smile playing on her red little mouth, Kate says, “You don’t need to be jealous, y’know. Richie and I aren’t like that.”

Seth feels like someone’s just reached inside his chest cavity and ripped his fucking lungs out. And that’s gotta be why his words come out all breathless and asthmatic when he says, “What the fuck? Who’s jealous?”

Seth finally recognizes Kate’s smile for what it is: _knowing_.

And then she leans down, hair sliding over her shoulders to frame her face and hit Seth with the smell of her vanilla shampoo. Her nose bumps his cheek, and her lips bump his lips, sticky with gloss, soft and not quite open. And it’s the sweetest, most innocent kiss that Seth’s ever received in his entire goddamn life, but it’s still better than any pornographic fantasy he could ever think up, because it’s _real_ , and he’s whipped. He’s so goddamn whipped. He’s whipped, and he’s all hers.

And Seth’s so caught up in this shitstorm of a revelation that he doesn’t even get to kiss Kate back before she’s retreating to the dressing room.

She smiles at him like they’re sharing a secret, and Seth badly wants to launch himself out of this chair, push her backwards into that dressing room, and fucking debauch her in semi-public. He’s fucking _quivering_ with the need to do exactly that. He’s fucking white knuckling the chair’s stumpy little faux-leather armrests over here.

The curtain swishes shut, and Seth’s breath whistles out through his teeth. He doesn’t get out of the chair to rip that curtain open and pounce on Kate, but only because Richie chooses that moment to return.

Richie looks Seth up and down. “You need some ice for that boner?”

Seth punches him in the stomach.


End file.
